Unknown, p.20
Unknown, page 20
Successive events crowd and jostle one another. Russell sequesters himself away from wife and daughter and completes his make-orbreak assignment in an angry forty-eight-hour burst. Then, on Sunday night, he declares that from now on he is going to adopt a more conventional schedule; to accommodate it, Tim must begin attending Willa Clanahan's Lucy van Pelt Day Nursery for Precious Preschoolers, a low-budget neighborhood institution with an enrollment of (plus or minus) eight. If the graders in Baltimore flag the first two chapters of The Autobiography of Amadeus Howell, he intends to abandon the quest for literary notoriety and to dip into their meager savings to open a gun shop in Jim Rowley's moribund Timberline Cafd.
Mary, hoping against hope that his graders maintain their cynically high standards, acquiesces. That Russell has threatened to embark upon a nine-to-five business career, even the operation of a gun shop, cheers her long-suffering soul. Although she could write a horror novel about the decade over which she has lent him her emotional or financial support, Russell probably could not. Postcards ordinarily exhaust his talent as well as his stamina, his recent creative hinge notwithstanding. Her own talent and stamina, meanwhile, must go toward rescuing Amadeus Howell from the disastrous setback occasioned by Russell and Tiffany's joint presence in his room. Since the incident he has grown snappish, remote, and even sillier than usual; indeed, over the weekend he has suffered two more lupine metamorphoses, and on her Monday shift Mary finds him wearing a flea collar along with the designer choke chain that another staff member gave him for Christmas.
So virulent is the residual frivolity plaguing him that each time Mary questions him, he responds with a snippet of ungrammatical lyrics from a mid-1960s hit by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. Later, on her coffee break, she must struggle to keep from crying.
Tiffany's first week at Willa Clanahan's does not go well, either.
She has had no experience playing with other children, and the toddlers at the Lucy van Pelt Day Nursery compose an aggressive, headstrong lot.
Russell, ensconced before the game shows and soap operas on the television set, takes a string of telephone calls from Mrs. Clanahan about his daughter's bossiness, selfishness, and highhanded refusals to compromise with her other "babies" whose seniority Tiffany has no inclination to acknowledge much less respect." Tie her to a chair in the kitchen," Russell advises Mrs. Clanahan." I will not," the put-upon woman declares, ringing off. But she calls back late in the afternoon to report that Tim has inaugurated the vile strategy of going from child to child and biting each one on his or her dimpled thigh or elbow, whichever anatomical target is more accessible. After inflicting these wounds, she throws back her head and howls rather sweetly at the Tiffany lamp in the den." I thought I'd tie her to a chair in the kitchen," Mrs. Clanahan admits. Russell replies, "Go right ahead." On Friday, this drastic precautionary measure carried over, reluctantly, from the previous afternoon, Mrs. Clanahan telephones to discuss Tiff s anomalous behavior at lunch; the child will not drink her milk or eat her chicken sandwich, insisting instead on such exotic fare as Ovaltine-laced sarsaparilla and leftover three-bean salad." Is it okay to give her such things?" Mrs. Clanahan inquires." Go right ahead," Russell replies." So long as it isn't poisoned coyote bait, I don't give a damn what you feed her." Mrs. Clanahan disapproves of this crass sentiment, but she generously indulges Tiffany's whim. Kids are her principal kick in life.
On Saturday morning the child is dreadfully ill. Russell imputes responsibility to Mrs. Clanahan, but Mary, just home from another bad night at the hospital, carefully examines her daughter and identifies the trouble as, dear God, morning sickness. For a moment both Parents stand tremulously aghast before the heartstopping monstrousness of this possibility. What a perverse, repugnant, thoroughly evil and unthinkable contingency." It's Jim Rowley's little boy, Sean," Russell eventually blurts." I've never trusted that sneaky kid, but, mark my words, I'm going to see that he does the honorable thing!" Mary, another suspicion in mind, prevents her husband from pursuing this course by suggesting that they take Till to the hospital for more conclusive tests. The rabbit dies. Home again, they make their daughter as comfortable as possible and find themselves confronting a bizarre set of uniformly odious options. (Parenting in the final fifth of the twentieth century poses challenges altogether unimaginable to mothers and fathers of previous generations.) A little over a week later, however, the Smithsons have company in their misery, for Mrs. Clanahan, something of an expert on pregnancy and childbirth, has independently deduced that four of Tiffany's little classmates undoubtedly share her delicate condition. In Carrion City news of this spectacular sort gets around fast. And when Mary confides in her husband that Amadeus Howell may be directly, albeit inadvertently, responsible for Tiff s present troubles, and therefore indirectly answerable for the epidemic at the Lucy van Pelt Day Nursery, Russell gleefully spreads this word, too, with the result that soon the entire town is ablaze with talk of a werewolfing attack on the Helen Hidalgo Hutton Hospital for Advanced Lycanthropic Hebephrenia. That the daughters of men may suffer no further indignity, monsters must die…
In the lovely April evening that Russell Smithson, Jim Rawley, and their many macho cohorts assemble their front-wheel-drive pickups at Sam Kelsall's feed store, here to load their shotguns, check out their spotlights, and bolster one another's fidgety courage, Mary carries Tiffany to the hospital to warn Amadeus Howell and the other inmates to escape. She also places a long-distance call to the highwaypatrol headquarters in Pueblo, Colorado, three hours away on the sagebrush-punctuated western periphery of the Great Plains. Will representatives of the patrol arrive in time to beard the male townsfolk at their ill-organized vigilantism? No. But by the time of the actual assault every last one of the bewildered hebephrenics has already fled.
Amadeus, honorary president of their Fenris Society, leads the other patients up into the snow-mantled peaks of the Sangre de Cristo range. (Slavering like beasts, they lope along on all fours under a gibbous moon.) Meanwhile, Russell and his revengeful henchmen, unaware that Mary and Tiffany are huddling inside the building, blast away at the walls with buckshot and mull the various methods by which they might be able to burn the hospital to the ground. They know in their bones that at this point in the proceedings a conflagration is obligatory, but no one has yet determined how to set the bleak, imposing structure afire.
Burnt-out matches litter the roadside, and the aroma of randomly splashed gasohol emanates in waves from the building's foundations. Mrs.
Hutton's institution will not catch. Finally, sirens screaming, four state patrol cars come hot-rodding into Carrion City. Almost simultaneously Mary appears on the battlements with Tiffany in her arms, an Opheliaesque madonna high above the shameful anarchy of the townsfolk. Abashed by this brave and melancholy show, Russell borrows a bullhorn and begins to talk Mary down by reciting from long-repressed memory the entire first part of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl." Twenty minutes before he has finished, the state troopers and Russell's colleagues-in-arms have all departed for home.
The siege is over. The Smithsons are reunited. But at what cost?
Patientless, the hospital must temporarily close its doors and release its staff. Mary, more fortunate than most, receives an interim appointment (salaried) to the board of the Helen Hidalgo Hutton Benevolent Foundation. Soon thereafter Russell learns that on the basis of his first two chapters an agent of the Wealthy Ghostwriters School, Inc. has negotiated a six-figure advance from a reputable New York publishing house for The Autobiography of Amadeus Howell, which will be marketed as a novel. He has eighteen months in which to deliver the finished manuscript. Mary disguises her chagrin as best she can. Elated but calculating, Russell hires a light aircraft and the services of an experienced bush pilot to help him find the absconded patients, among whom resides the only living being who can bring his incomplete narrative to a fitting and truthful end. During the third week of Russell's absence (his search has not gone well at all), Tiffany is delivered of three tiny malamute puppies with endearing creamcolored eyebrows. Struggling to preserve her optimism, Mary reflects that at least she and Russell will not have to buy the child a dog. A week later Tiffany's four playmates from Mrs. Clanahan's undergo equally unnerving parturitions, and in the best pioneer tradition neighbor rallies around neighbor to reassure and console. (There is some discreet but sanguine speculation that perhaps one day these canine children will repopulate the hospital.) Russell eventually limps home without having found Amadeus or any other member of the Fenris Society.
Mary can tell that he is going to be a lousy grandfather.
He begins talking about using the pups as sled-dogs, once they acquire sufficient weight and strength to aid him in his pursuit of their absent sire. Snarling, the bravest of the pups bites Russell on the ankle.
Mary intervenes to save her grandchild's hide. Later that night she lies beside her unsuspecting husband thinking of Amadeus Howell and his lairlike hideaway on the icy steeps. Certain passages in The Wolves of West Elk Springs seem to have prefigured this portentous moment.
There is a flutter in her stomach. It is terrifyingly difficult not to giggle…
12 - Dennis Etchison - The Chair
Marty," she said, "I need you."
He studied the lips. The air was opalescent with cigarette smoke, the lights too far away to make it easy. Her complexion was smooth and taut; a faint bloom of perspiration glittered in the shadows below her cheekbones. It was impossible, of course. And yet…
"Christy?" he said, incredulous.
He wanted to reach out and touch her to be sure. At the same time he was seized by a desperate impulse to leave his chair and run: between tables to the bar, even to the dance floor where faces he seemed to know had been grafted onto bodies he would never recognize, bodies that now gyrated feverishly to music he thought he had forgotten long ago.
"I've been looking for you all night," she said." H was afraid you wouldn't come." He heard her voice masked by the noise, as though through a wind tunnel." Can we go somewhere? We can't talk here."
Martin rose uncertainly and followed. The crowd surgpd. Her form grew smaller and was lost to him. He threaded a path between abandoned chairs, his arm brushing a table, upsetting a half-finished glass of wine. A red blot spread across the white linen. He righted the empty glass and tried to move on.
A powerful hand stopped his wrist.
" Didn't think you'd get away that easy, did you?"
Martin looked up. A smudged copy of a face from his childhood towered over him. Around the eyes grainy skin crinkled in amusement, emphasizing preternaturally blue contact lenses.
"Bill Crabbe," said the tall man expectantly.
Martin gaped. It was true. Crabbe, the baseball star from high scho, ol. Martin shook his hand.
'How ya doin', buddy?" Crabbe pumped his arm." My gosh, Jerry Marber!
You're sure lookin' good. What you been doin' with yourself all these years?"
Martin realized he had been mistaken for someone else.
He considered correcting the tall man. At that moment there was a pause in the music and hyperventilating couples pressed back between the wooden pillars to their banquet tables. An intoxicating cloud of hair spray and cologne blew over him. He gazed through the crowd to the polished walls and round windows, searching for Christy's face. He cleared his throat.
"Excuse me, Jer," said Crabbe abruptly, "but there's Wayne Fuller. I gotta say hi. My gosh, look at him. He hasn't changed a bit, has he?
Old Wayne. Hey, over here!"
Crabbe moved on, paddling against the throng with his big pitcher's hand outstretched.
Martin spotted an exit. Christy or someone very much like her was leaning against the lacquered door, trying to light a cigarette while her eyes grew whiter, sweeping the ballroom.
For me, he thought. She's waiting for me, even after so many years. I should have known. I should have kept the faith. Well, maybe I have without realizing it.
We'll find out now, won't we?
Couples swept past in a frenzied rush. The room seemed to tilt as bodies hurried to one side. The backs of men with polyester suits and indeterminate waistlines bobbled six deep in front of the cash bar.
Martin took a deep breath. He felt drunk. He steadied himself against a chair and aimed for the other side.
" Jimmy!" called a booming voice.
He pressed on through louvers of crepe paper strung from the bandstand, a wall of voices closing in. Heads streaked with graying sideburns and permanent wave curls blocked his way. When they moved aside, he noticed that Christy was gone from the doorway.
"Jimmy Madden! Knew it was you!"
The gravel voice of a bull-necked football coach boomed again.
This time it jarred him to a standstill.
Martin turned and was confronted by a short-sleeved sport shi rt, the same print he remembered from school. He scrutinized the face above and nodded, smiling impatiently.
What was the coach's name?
Then he realized it was not the coach's face, after all. It was Warrick. Mark Warrick, once star lineman for the Greenworth Buckskins.
He had made it to the state play-offs, if Martin remembered correctly.
"Nice to see you, Mark," said Martin reflexively." Only I'm not A sweet-smelling woman disengaged from the pack and took possession of Martin's left arm. He felt her breast push into his side.
"Gail!" said Warrick. His lantern jaw dropped open and uneven teeth shone there wetly." Are you still with Bob? I mean-"
"Not for a year and a half," announced Gail. She kneaded Martin's forearm as if measuring it." And how are you, Joe?"
The man in the sport shirt plowed ahead." Guess what, Gail? I'm Head Coach at GHS now. Did you hear? Uh, are you, I mean, did you come alone?"
She said, "Don't I see your wife, Mark? That sweet little thing over there in the corner, waiting for someone to ask her to dance?
What was her name?"
Martin was aware of the underwiring of her bra prying his ribs apart.
She turned on him again, inches away, and blinked into his eyes from beneath lids heavy with raccoon mascara.
"Joe Ivy. Did you know that I used to have the most humongous crush on you?"
"Yes," said Martin hurriedly." No. I didn't. I don't. That is, it isn't me. I'm not really here."
He disembraced and tripped forward, wrinkling someone's satin.
The exit still appeared the length of a football field away, as if seen through the small end of a telescope. He jostled wrists and left ice cubes clinking thickly in plastic cocktail tumblers, and made a final run for the deck and the night outside.
He was chilled by the sudden touch of a harbor breeze on his neck.
He did not slow until he had gone all the way astern on the Promenade Deck, where he leaned back on his elbows and allowed the image of the Windsor Room to recede into a frame of brass portholes and freshly painted guardrails.
The doorway to the ballroom remained open, throwing a rectangle of yellow light onto the boards below the main mast. Through the doorway he made out a hand-lettered streamer of hunting on the aft wall, above the bar.
WELCOME GREENWORTH HIGH SCHOOL CLASS OF '62, it read, 20 YEAR REUNION.
She stepped in front of him, eyeing him in the old way. Behind her head a warm glow caught her hair. He tried to read her expression, but in the backlight there was no clue. He sought for the right way to begin again. He straightened, his body inching involuntarily closer to her, and the spill of warmth diminished to a sliver and faded as the exit door whispered shut. A round of whooping applause rose up inside as a toast was made on stage, and then the door sealed and there was only the rhythm of a drumroll to blend with. the lapping of dark waters that rocked the bulkhead almost imperceptibly beneath his feet.
He wanted to make up for so much lost time, to force her to a confrontation so long in the coming, to send bolts of blue fire shimmering over her and down her throat. Instead he said, "Christy."
She dropped her cigarette, and a wind swirled it away in a vortex of sparks.
"I want to know," he said, "how it's been for you. I want to know it all. Or whatever you want to tell. If you can tell me. You know you can. Christy." He held out his hand.
She lowered her eyes and fumbled for another cigarette.
"I'm glad everything worked out for you and Sherman," he lied.
He almost gagged on the name. It was the first time he had said it or even allowed himself to think it for perhaps fifteen years. Sherman the loser, the guy who never had any friends. Till Martin came along and tried to help. In the end, Martin learned about helping too much… .
Your move, he thought, afraid to think any further. Tell me that it's dead between you, that it always was. Tell me that you haven't changed, and make me believe that I haven't, either. Do it. Do it now, or stay out of the rest of my life.
She was suddenly shy, unable to look at him." I don't know how to-',
"Begin anywhere."
He waited.
A solitary pleasure craft passed in the bay, its running lights obscured for seconds at a time by the massive rigging of the deck upon which he and Christy stood.
"You always hated him, didn't you." She said it oddly, as if to reassure hersell As if the idea gave her some kind of satisfaction.
"What does it matter?"
"I think it does. That's why I came."
That's why? he thought, growing more disoriented by the minute.
Well, if she wants to explain, she's certainly taken her time about it.
